


Seascapes

by AceQueenKing



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Colonist (Mass Effect), F/F, Homesickness, Mindoir, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Shepard finds that you can’t go home again - but you can get close.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/gifts).



Commander Bonnie Shepard relaxed into the hot tub, a beer between her fingers in one hand and a remote control in the other.  
  
She studied it intently. Perhaps a bit _too_ intently, as the liquor had made her reflexes dull and her mind duller. Anderson’s hot tub had the most complex remote she had ever seen, worse even than the baffling, imposing one for the television, which had come with with a manual in not one volume, but _two_. She enjoyed tinkering with such things, but even she found it a _bit_ intimidating.  
  
She shifted down into the bubbles as she studied the remote in the light. Several of its commands were simple enough: heat the water up or cool it down; more bubbles or less; targeted jet areas; a cleaning cycle. Others seemed more foreign—olfactory target zones; species specific seating arrangements; landscapes. She could guess what the first two were -  a bit of a nice smell and seating that moved inward or out to accommodate, say, krogan bulk and quarian knees the same, but landscapes – that eluded her.   
  
For the first six beers, she had left the button to itself, promising herself that she would look it up in the manual on her omni when she stepped out of the tub.  But now – now she was on her seventh beer, and impatient, and the combination of these two influences made Bonnie do something she would have hesitated to do when sober – and that was press the button.  
  
“INSERT LOCATION,” a robotic voice said. It was an old-sounding synthetic voice; not quite as fluid as Avina, let alone EDI. Shepard wondered how old it was; it certainly had a volume far above what was, strictly speaking, necessary.   
  
“Mindoir," she said, swallowing a bit of beer. She wouldn’t be able to go home before this war was over, and hadn’t been able to bring herself go home in twenty years, yet the name was automatic on her lips.   
  
“MINDOIR SELECTED. COORDINATES AND OR ADDRESS.” It could not be that old, she supposed, if it had a human colony that had been started (and burned) merely thirty years ago.  
  
“Clarktown,” She said, then, unsure of how specific to make the request: “6505 Talsa Corridor.”   
  
“AFFIRMATIVE. SEASCAPE FOUND,” The booming narrator said. “PREPARE TO RELAX.” 

 _As if one could with that voice_ , she thought, but her criticisms on the robots voice fell by the way side as suddenly, her childhood home came shimmering into focus.

Her breath caught in her throat as the lights dimmed, and the brilliant swells of Odysseus' Sea rose around her. It was blue, as it had been in her youth, the icy-white waters softly lapping at the shore. The beach was unusually clear, and vivid; she could see almost every grain in the shore-line, tossed about in the ebbing tide. For a moment, she could not dare to look up, so enraptured by the tide. A mess of emotions tore through her – hope, that perhaps the homestead would still be there; fear, for what if it _was_ ; eagerness and loathing and longing, all coursing through her at lightning speed.  
  
Finally she swallowed, courage in her eyes, and dared to glance upwards. 

It was _there_. An undignified sound escaped her throat, caught between a moan and a gasp. It had been so long since she had seen it, so long since she had _dared_ to see it, even in her own mind, but there it was: the same three-room pre-fab that she had lived in nearly her entire childhood. It was still there, in the landscape; frozen in time, a perfect white and yellow home on the edge of the shore. There were no marks marring it; no indication at all that this planet had been all but _burned_ by the Batarians, no corpses in the sand, no blaster wounds in the woodwork. It was _exactly_ as it had been. She half expected her mother to come out and wave at her.  
  
She felt a tear running down her cheek and jabbed at it, angry at the sudden _overwhelming_ sadness she felt at the sight of it. It was gone now, had been gone a long time. Why had she even thought to ask for it? It was foolish, a sappy bit of longing. And now she was crying, in a hot tub no less.  
  
 “Shepard?” Tali’s soft, slightly drunken voice trilled. Bonnie looked up, startled; she had fallen deaf to the world around her, including Tali’s drunken plodding into their room. “Where are you?”  
  
  “In here,” she said, wincing as her voice sounded rusty. “Hot-tub!”  
  
She knew she should probably get out of the tub, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the house, still spell-bound by the white siding, the yellow awnings. Tali didn’t need to be told twice where she was. Within seconds, Mindoir shimmered as one of the hot tub doors opened, and Tali stumbled in.  
  
“Oooh,” Tali said, twirling as Mindoir projected itself onto her. Bonnie’s heart caught in her throat as she watched, the sands of Mindoir swirling across her girlfriend’s skin-tight bodysuit as she turned, taking in her childhood home. “What is this? Very pretty.”   
  
“Mindoir,” she said.   
  
Tali stopped twirling, her still-slightly swaying body coming to a stop. Even through the mask, Bonnie saw her eyes widen. “Oh.”  She didn’t know what to say; that much was obvious. Tali stared around herself, looking at a world that Tali had never seen, but knew of. She traced the small house on the wall, her long Quarian fingers caressing Bonnie’s childhood home with a reverent tenderness.  
  
“Come here,” Bonnie said, her heart beating faster at the thought of Tali and the house. She would have liked to have brought her there. Her father would have liked Tali; he’d never met a gearhead he hadn’t loved.  
  
“Can I…?” She pointed down toward the water, and Bonnie shook her head.   
  
“Sorry. One – one minute.” She fumbled for the remote, quickly selecting _quarian/human_. The water churned, a strong scent of disinfectant rising. She wrinkled her nose, but said nothing, accepting it as a small price to pay for togetherness.     
  
“Okay,” she said. Tali nodded, her hands immediately beginning to disengage the suit, starting with her gloves. She watched in fascination as Tali unsteadily stripped; the helmet came off as quick as her gloves did, and she watched the long, black hair slowly appear as the helmet was placed to the side. She shook it lose and it fanned out across her shoulders. Tali’s glowing eyes caught her own and she smiled, then slowly gazed downward, watching Tali strip off the long quarian suit.  
  
It was not an easy process. It took her the better half of fifteen minutes to free her soft, purple-tinged skin from it’s prison. Bonnie watched with adoring eyes as she reverently folded the square of purple and white fabric, placing it delicately on the table just inside the bedroom. Wiggling out of the suit took her longer, but was worth it, as was the sight of her soft, round hips shimmying out of the skintight fabric. This, too, was meticulously folded and left to the side, before Tali stepped into the water.  
  
She took her place at Bonnie’s side in seconds. She held her arm around Tali and breathed deep. Tali’s hands curled around her shoulders, the soft quarian skin an entirely different experience from the space suit she wore most of the time. Tali nuzzled her cheek against Bonnie’s own, pressing the lightest of kisses to her temple. “It’s beautiful, Shepard,” she said.   
  
They stood in silence for some time, watching Odysseus’ tides pull in. It was a comfortable silence; both focused on observing the lost world that bloomed around them.   
  
“We could go, if you wanted.” Tali offered, several minutes later. She looked away from Mindoir for the first time, startled. “We could build a home there.”  
  
The stunning admission – that Tali would give up Rannoch, would give up her _people_ to live on a long-dead world – surprised her, to the point that it left her speechless. Tali patiently waited, her eyes still turned to her lovingly.  
  
“No, I – “ She found her voice, at last, shaking her head. “I can’t. Not yet. Maybe someday but – ”  
  
“Alright.” Tali wait, her long fingers caressing Bonnie’s side. Tali leaned in close, so close they were nearly one, and rested her head on her shoulder. “Would you tell me about it, then? Sometime?”   
  
“Yeah,” she said. She took a small risk, leaning down to press a small kiss to Tali’s lips. “Sometime.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fanfoolishness for a theme prompt on Tumblr for Tali + Seascapes.


End file.
